


I and Love and You (For Dummies)

by urbankarls



Category: No Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, Minor Injuries, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, i just love suffering!, takes a big sip, thats vintero babey, warning: big oof
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 15:54:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17287031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/urbankarls/pseuds/urbankarls
Summary: This is a gift for my dearest friend. Thank you for always being there for me when I need it most. I hope this brings you even a fraction of the joy you bring into my life.THIS IS OC/OC so if you stumble upon this and wonder what's going on that's why. However, this is an original work so you may like it! Feel free to read and I hope you enjoy.





	I and Love and You (For Dummies)

_Red carnation._

That was Viktor’s first thought as he stared down at the red petal pinched between his fingertips. The remaining petals were swirling down the drain of the grimy sink below him, a blurred mix of flowers and blood, as he laughed to himself. 

_Would he be happy I knew that so fast?_

That was Viktor’s immediate second thought. Not of death, which he now knew was coming for him at a faster pace than expected, but of the gardener. _Of fucking course._

The tiny petal now in his palm was beginning to look like a drop of blood against his brown skin as tears blurred the edges of his vision. The itching inside Viktor’s chest was beginning again, and he barely threw himself onto the rim of the nearby toilet before he began another coughing fit.

He had seen it before, hanahaki that is, but he hadn’t had a name for it before Entero and Ana had entered his life. Viktor had heard of a “lovey dovey flower disease,” whispered through the drunken lips of those that frequented Mara’s bar. Had lain into his bed a man who bore the scar of the cure and pressed into the wall of a bathroom stall a woman who cried when touched tenderly because she had been the cause of one. Viktor had once even toasted with Mara over the fact that they would never have to deal with issues of the heart (and also apparently the lungs) such as this. 

_Oh how the mighty have fallen._

With that thought Viktor choked on a laugh, or maybe a sob, or maybe even a whole potted plant. It felt like he had been beaten from the inside out, the coughing fit feeling like it had lasted hours. He had work soon, Zula was coming in for her last sleeve session and the least he could do his finish the kid’s sleeve before he died on her. She would hate him for sure, and the mental pictures of Zula kicking his gravestone with a finished tattoo were at least marginally better than the ones without. 

The mental image alone was enough to peel his face from the toilet seat and sure enough there was more red. More red carnation, this time even an entire flower, floating in the water of the bowl. The pain and itch in his chest had subsided for now, and for coughing up an entire bouquet he was feeling pretty alright. But, he doubted his ability to sit upright for the six hour session without upchucking a red carnation directly onto his pseudo-daughter. 

He eyed his phone next to the sink, knowing the phone call he needed to make was about to make his life easier or end it a lot more quickly. Viktor sighed to himself as he hit ‘ **SMALL ANGRY** ’ in his wheelhouse of main contacts and waited until the familiar voice came through the phone.

“Viktor, for the last time I am at WORK with my FATHER and I CANNOT bring you Chipotle. You work RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET! JUST POSTMATES IT LIKE A NORMAL TWENTY-SOMETHING!!”

Oh Ana, Viktor thought to himself as her voice rang loudly through the phone. He was going to miss that tiny cinnamon altoid mint when he kicked it to the great big tattoo shop in the sky. If he thought grieving Zula was going to be a bad time, grieving Ana was going to set the whole graveyard aflame. 

“Ana…. please, I need your help. You can’t tell Entero.” 

The gentleness of his voice must have shaken her, because the line goes so quiet Viktor can hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears. Neither of them could keep anything from the quiet gardener, so the fact Viktor was even asking meant something truly terrible was going on. 

“Viktor are you okay? What’s wrong?,” her voice sounded so small, Viktor had almost forgotten she was only sixteen. He mentally slapped himself for calling her, even though she knew how to help him, she would now also know he was dying. He could hear the furious sounds of Ana stowing her work apron under the register.

“It’s the flower thing. Hanahaki. I have it.” 

Saying it aloud gave it finality. It was putting the finishing touches on the greenhouse he was going to die in. 

_I wonder if I bloom after I die? Would he plant me?_

Shaking the morbid thought from his head, Viktor focuses in on the lack of noise coming through the phone. Then on the bell of the shop dinging quietly from Ana’s end and then the sounds of a sixteen year old muffling their tears, no doubt in the alley between the small plant shop and the breakfast cafe next door. 

He should have known not to do this. He should have known to keep a tight lid on every mental image he had of Ana a few years after she and Entero had moved here. A tiny red headed fourteen year old with knobbly knees and more freckles than face, who had taken one look at Zula’s long white hair and mismatched eyes and coughed up a crocus. 

Viktor had watched her for a year after that, as she got thinner and thinner, the bags under her eyes were as deep a violet as the crocus petals she hid in her pockets. She lived a full year with hanahaki, almost unheard of unless you’re Viktor and you witnessed it firsthand. Ana being basically an apothecary reincarnated, kept herself alive with a plant growing in her lungs by fighting all it’s ailments with other plants. Viktor had once watched her uproot an entire ginseng plant and eat the still dirt covered root because she had caught sight of Zula through the window in the front of the shop. Her homemade ginseng and schizandra cures had kept her under Entero’s radar that entire year, and then the Hanahaki nearly killed her. 

He shouldn’t have called her. He should have known not to open old scars, especially the one that resided in the center of the sixteen year old’s chest. 

“Viktor.” 

Having heard his name, Viktor snapped back into reality.

“I’m okay Ana really. It’s going to be fine,” he says as he slides into his shoes and grabs his keys. 

“Viktor. Meet me at the shop. I’m going to cure you,” there is still a stuffiness to her voice, but Viktor hears the bell of the shop ding in the background. Ana was on a mission, and when she was determined like that you just tell everyone to clear a path. 

Viktor still had four hours before his session with Zula, but that was beginning to look more and more like a pipe dream. He could go get the ginseng powders from Ana, call in sick, and then try again tomorrow. Ana had survived a whole year, why couldn’t he?

_If and when I die, i’m going to make Entero plant flowers next to my grave. Something really petty like white clover, so that he’ll at least know how I feel from the afterlife._

Entero had been the one who had gotten him into flowers and their meanings. The first time he entered the small flower shop, and the first time he laid eyes on the tall silver haired man, he had made the mistake of asking Ana for yellow carnations for his mother’s grave. Ana may have been twelve at the time, but he was ever thankful for the wall of man that swiftly maneuvered him away from the murderous ginger. 

Viktor had learned a lot of things that day. Yellow carnations mean disdain, while the pink ones were for keeping someone in your memories. Red ones were for heart ache, white clover meant ‘think of me’, and Entero had the palest blue eyes Viktor had ever seen in his life. Then two years later, Ana had fallen head over heels for Viktor’s daughter-but-not-daughter and with Zula haunting his tattoo parlor it meant seeing a lot of the red-head, and her silver haired father. 

The turning point had been the day Ana collapsed. It had been a slow day at the shop so Viktor was sketching the plants from across the street and had seen when Ana’s body had finally just given out. He was across the street and through the front door before he even realized he was running, dialing 911 and yelling for Entero from the back. 

Entero had shown up a lot after that. At first it was with fruits from his backyard and an invitation to dinner as a ‘thank you for saving my entire world’ gift. Then it became Viktor lounging in the shade of the plants during his down time, sketching and listening to Entero talk quietly to every plant in the shop. Viktor coming to dinner because they had heard he lived alone. Viktor bonding with Ana over art and bad 80s sci-fi movies. Entero opening up to him about Ana’s parents and his grief over losing his sibling after his parents, and in return Viktor holding him close and quietly telling him about the foster systems he was shuffled between as a child. 

Then, after a year and a half of peace and tranquility Entero had simply looked up at him, smiled, and said, “Are you coming to dinner tonight? I’m making your favorite, vegetable curry.” 

It felt like the universe had taken all of the terrible things in Viktor’s life and compressed them into a pearl, placed it gently in his hands and said, “This one is just for you.” 

Viktor had realized that this had been a long time coming. That every smile Entero had given him had felt like a tattoo spreading across his heart and mind. Everytime Entero opened up to him, touched him, laughed at his jokes or gave him flowers was like knowing the secret of life. Ana was the moon of his life, her father the lighthouse in the dark, and after so many years of being tossed at sea he felt like he was home, 

Viktor arrived at the flower shop just in time as a carnation and a purple cyclamen completed their journey out of his ribcage. With a vicious cough he held the wrinkled plants in his hands as he watched his tears gently strike each petal. Entero came to his mind now, supplying the meaning of cyclamen, and hearing his voice only made the tears fall harder. 

_Resignation and good-bye._

Viktor knew from the moment the red petal touched his skin this morning that there was no way he could undergo the procedure that Ana had. The first time he had seen Ana look at Zula and not recognize her, it had even broken his heart. There was no way he could forget Entero. Viktor had lived his last moments loving one man, and he would gladly die doing it too. 

Composing himself and stuffing the flowers into his pocket, Viktor strides into the flower shop and immediately receives an armful of Ana. Tear tracks still extend from under her big green eyes, and even after all these years she’s still more freckle than face. Viktor has to fight off another wave of tears as he looks down into his second baby’s eyes. She finally lets go of him, and he notes that her arms are covered in soil all the way to the elbow, she must have dug up ginseng roots just to cure him. 

She stands up taller, wiping at the moisture collecting in her eyes. 

“Okay Viktor. I have the cure in the garden,” taking his hand ever so gently, Ana leads him through the shop. 

Viktor tries to take in every detail of the old shop as they walk through the backroom and out into the garden. The old wood floors and chipped green paint of the shop itself, and the secret oasis that is the back garden. Viktor spent many days there drawing and lying in the hammock Entero had set up for Ana. The large space contained a multitude of large pots containing various flora, and Viktor loved the way Entero’s hair glittered in the dappled light cast through the trellis walls. 

However, right now it was hard to see in the low light as Ana sat him on the cement bench in the middle of the garden. 

Kissing his hair Ana released his hand, “I’ll be right back with it. I have to go pull a fresh root for you to eat, it’ll quickly curb a lot of your symptoms.” she quickly disappeared into the dark, leaving Viktor alone in the garden he had grown to love. 

_Kinda fucked up that karma’s going to kill us with a plant huh?_

Viktor found the strength to chuckle at his own mental joke as the carnations spread vines around his lungs. He coughed once, twice, three times and felt as a cloud of petals rained out of his mouth and onto the ground around his feet. It was getting harder to catch his breath after these fits, and Viktor began to wonder if Ana’s plant voodoo could even save him at this point. 

“Ana? What are you? Why are you shoving m- ANA,” a voice rings out from the dark and Viktor knows from the marrow in his bones to the end of his hair exactly who it is. 

_Entero._

The warm feeling in Viktor’s chest is soon replaced with sheer terror as he frantically tries to scoop up all the petals from the ground. He can’t let Entero see the evidence of a love he probably doesn’t want… because that’s what it comes down to doesn’t it? Viktor in all his cheating, lying, promiscuous and survive-at-all-costs ways have finally put him in the grave for loving a man who his nothing like him. 

Viktor is still trying to corral the petals when suddenly the strings of bulb lights that drape across the top of the garden flick on. 

Brown eyes meet endlessly blue ones…

...and Viktor coughs up an entire violet. 

_Loyalty, devotion, faithfulness_

Entero is next to him before his heart can even beat a second time, he gently takes Viktor’s arm and leans him back against the cement bench. There are tears beginning to form in his eyes and Viktor wishes to every God that the plants would just kill him now for making Entero cry. The silver haired man gently pushes the bangs back from Viktor’s sweaty forehead with one hand, and checks his pulse with another. 

“Oh God, Viktor. We need to get you to a hospital,” Entero is frantic now, slapping the pockets of his apron inthe international sign of ‘i-can’t-find-my-cell-phone.’

Viktor feels so tired now, worn out from the long day of coughing up flowers. He throws caution to the wind and gently takes Entero’s hands. They’ve always been bigger than his, and Viktor wanted to know the story behind every scar, and kiss every single one of them. It’s a shame he’ll die before scrapbooking every inch of Entero into his mind. 

“Hey, Entero. It’s okay I don’t think i’ll make it to a hospital anyways,” he squeezes Entero’s hands gently an cradles them close to his chest. Funny how he’s full of things that love Entero: plants and his own heart. 

Viktor turns his head to cough up another flower, and his eyes catch on the large pot full of pink-orange flowers. As he looks Viktor realizes they are surrounded by pot after pot packed full of the same flower. 

_Chrysanthemums._

Entero is shedding tears now, and his hands stay locked firmly in Viktor’s grip, he’s wheezing and Viktor faintly wonders if he’s having a panic attack. The young tattoo artist locks eyes with the gardener, then nods his head weakly in the direction of the flowers.

“Entero...w-what do Chrysanthemums mean again?” 

Viktor gets his question out before another round of coughing produces a vine with more violets and carnations attached. He can feel more of them threatening to crawl out of his throat, time is short. 

Entero seems startled by the question considering the main focus should be the flowers coming out of Viktor rather than the ones around him. He glances around at the flowers, then looks at he and Viktor’s joined hands. 

“Honesty. They mean honesty.”

_“I’m going to cure you.” That’s what Ana had said._

Entero fixes him in his stare, and Viktor is weak to the warm firmness of his hands against the shaking claminess of his own. Entero is quiet for a long time. He always thinks this hard before he’s going to say something important. 

“Viktor….. Who did this to you? Who do you love?”

Entero asked, and Viktor can’t lie to him. Never could. And now he is going to die because he’ll say ‘I love you’ and Entero will say ‘I don’t’. But at least he will have died saying it, and he will have tried his best to do what Ana and Entero wanted him to do. 

It hurts leaving his body the way the flowers did. The fear and weight attached to it pains him more than any “lovey dovey flower disease” could. He wishes the world would end right now, with Entero’s hand in his. He wishes the flowers would kill him before he finishes. The dying part of his brain clicks two brain cells together and even wishes Mara would smell his weakness from down the street and come smash his head in with a bottle. 

But still, it feels so damn good. He cries and he holds onto Entero for dear life, because he’s always been holding onto him like that. Entero came into his life and he can’t remember what it was like without him. Viktor wants to see what his bed head looks like, what he’d wear to their first date, what his back looks like when it's hit by the sun streaming through Viktor’s bedroom window, what it’s like to kiss him while making breakfast. There’s only one combination of words to get that point across and goddamnit-

“You. It’s you. I love you Entero. I do.” 

A pained wheeze comes from Entero, and Viktor is so convinced that he’s going to die hearing him say, “I just don’t feel the same,” when something gently brushes one of his fingers. Viktor is crying so hard it’s difficult to see through the tears, and there’s an apology working its way through the botanical garden in his throat when he sees it. 

A bright white smudge against the reds and purples of the petals cascading around him. He blinks tears out of his eyes, and yeah he’s dying but not crazy, a bright white petal is lying in the midsts of the flower pile. Viktor’s eyes trace the line from the petal to his love’s face as Entero coughs up more and more white petals, seemingly hellbent on beating Viktor to the grave. 

They seperate hands as Entero coughs up entire bulbs of the the flower, then a vine, then just petals, then a seed hits the ground and bounces away into the darkness. Viktor places a hand on Entero’s back, dumbstruck as he lifts one of the flowers up.

_Gardenia._

_“This one is my favorite. It means secret love.”_

Viktor stares deeply into the gardenia, the same plant Entero had once called his favorite was now sprouting inside him and Viktor wonders if God has always been a poet or if it was just a hobby. 

He stares so deeply into the flower, only breaking focus when two pale scarred hands slowly remove the flower from his grasp and then gently cup his face, he looks up into Entero’s silver eyes and things fall into place.

“Y-you too? Why didn’t you say anything? How long?”

Entero’s thumb gently strokes the skin beneath Viktor’s right eye, so gently that the tattoo artist stops breathing altogether. Forget hanahaki, cause of death: gentle gardener hands. Entero’s eyes are still watery but his smile is on in full force, Viktor can barely handle the sight. 

“Yes. I was terrified of losing you. Six months. Ana’s been pumping me so full of roots and herbs that I might be one at this point.” 

“S-so y-you. Y-you…,” Viktor is choking on his own sobs now, petals falling out everytime he opens his mouth. It’s getting really hard to take a full breath, let alone one in front of Entero.

“Yes Viktor. I love you too,” Entero says it, and it’s like the roots burst through his chest. Viktor feels so painfully alive and iridescent at the same time, but the burning in his chest and throat pulls him away from the loving grip of Entero’s hands. He doubles over in a coughing fit, carnation and cyclamen petals flying around him as they forcefully leave his boy with each cough. First whole bulbs, then roots, vines, and finally a sickly yellow seed quietly hits the ground in front of him. 

He’s free. He’s free and alive and Entero loves him. 

Rounding on him quickly, Viktor places a hand on Entero’s cheek, both of them tinted with a third degree blush even in the dim lighting of the garden. They lock teary eyes, hands looking for any landing spot as they close the distance between each other. 

Entero kisses like he does everything else, gently and thoughtfully. Viktor pulls back for air only for Entero to slide back into his space and kiss him breathless one, two, three more times. Viktor contemplates the idea that he might actually be dead, this might actually be heaven when he licks his way into Entero’s mouth. Finally making him gasp the way he got to in his dreams. He thinks he should try dying more often, and he runs a tattooed hand through Entero’s soft silver hair. 

They both finally come up for air, both giddy and smiling in this pile of flower petals. As if they both weren’t on the verge of dying just moments ago. Entero pushes a lock of Viktor’s hair behind his ear, kisses his fingers, his cheeks, strokes the skin of his arm reverently and the younger man has never been so sure of anything in his entire life. 

“I love you. So much.”

Entero smiles wider, “I love you more, Sunflower.”

_Pet names? Already? You sap. Never stop._

After ages pass and the night chills the pair into returning to the indoors, Viktor once again is greeted with an armful of Ana. She’s crying, and her arms circle around Viktor’s waist as her head rests against his chest. 

“I-I-I’m s-so g-glad you guys are o-okay!,” she’s punctuating each word with a sob but Viktor understands enough of it to run a hand through her auburn hair. 

Entero comes around to the other side wrapping his arms around both Ana and Viktor, like he was built for holding these two together. Ana slowly settles down in the warmth created by the two men cocooning her in their arms, smiling as she finally puts two and two together seeing both Entero and Viktor alive and upright. 

It’s been a long day for the whole trio, and Viktor’s yawn brings that to the attention of the other two. They separate as Ana goes to get her things, and as Viktor goes to suggest the idea of going home to get rest, Entero grabs his hand.

“Stay with us tonight. Er, well I mean, st-stay with me,” Entero’s face is burning red as he looks away from Viktor and stares very intently at the wall. 

Viktor is on cloud nine, “Okay.” 

They all climb into Entero’s old red pickup truck and as they park in front of the house Viktor can’t help but feel like he’s finally come home. 

 

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Viktor awakens slowly, mostly jarred by how warm he is. As he settles into consciousness he realizes the weight around his middle is actually Entero’s arm, and as he shifts Entero pulls him closer to his broad chest in his sleep. Viktor is dumbstruck at the whole situation. Never in his entire existence did he think he would ever be here, in the arms of the only man he has ever loved. He turns to face Entero and admire him before the other can wake and catch him. Entero’s long hair fans out over the pillows, shining in the sun like polished silver. Shadows cast from his long eyelashes, and the semi-crooked bend of his nose casts a graceful slope onto his cheekbone. Viktor is so in love his chest feels like it’s full of flowers again, but in this moment he knows they are both safe…. Are both loved. 

Entero stirs, “Viktor, you’re thinking so loud I can hear it,” he groans. Opening one pale blue eye and then the other, slowly reeling in Viktor until their foreheads bump together. Viktor swats at his bare chest, eliciting laughter from the pair as smiling mouths becoming kissing ones. 

“Breakfast?,” Viktor asks. Trying to cross this one off the bucket list before death comes for him again. 

Entero’s eyes are like molten glass full of so much admiration that Viktor might drown in it, 

“I’d love to.” 

Viktor learns a lot of things this day. Entero had the palest blue eyes Viktor had ever seen in his life and his silken locks were apparently immune to bedhead. He liked blueberries in his pancakes and always made sure to arrange them in smiley faces as he cooked them. Ana’s hair became an untamable thicket of red after sleep, rivaled only by the rogue swirls of Viktor’s own wavy hair. Entero hums when he chops fruit, and he takes Viktor’s hand and leads him in a slow swaying dance around the kitchen to some oldies song on the radio. Ana liked her coffee black, Entero liked his very sweet. 

Entero’s morning kisses taste like blueberries and sugar. 

Viktor thinks he should buy a red carnation for the windowsill.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Please leave a comment if you actually enjoyed this OC work, it means a lot. I am hoping to start writing fandom fics again soon!


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